[SIC] 146: Corn Teen Spirit

June 24th 2021

Hi all,

I’m writing this from the backseat of an Uber en route to my first bit of international travel in a while; it feels pretty much exactly like the last trip, at the end of 2019 (except the Uber costs twice as much…). Which gets me thinking again about how I can make this weekly digest most useful. Last week’s question about the value of timeliness versus curatorial voice tilted heavily toward curation as what you like best, which is flattering. Thanks, all who weighed in.

In that spirit, another question for you here. There’s a LOT of links in this missive each week; I battle with the Substack content volume limiter every Thursday, as a matter of fact. So the question is - in an open(ing) post-pandemic world, do you still want it all? Or should I cut back? LMK if you get a sec.

One thing I won’t cut back on, irrespective: including contributions and suggestions from friends and colleagues. To that end, thanks to Andrea, Rob and Josh for hooking me up this week. You rule.

No [SIC] Talks this week, but next I’m really stoked for next week’s chat with Casey Lewis, who writes the totally-essential After School newsletter, and whom I encountered first via her “Monday Media Diet” over on WITI - another indispensable source of inspiration.

Ok. Now, enjoy. xB

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Zeitgeist

• America's Alcohol Industry Needs a Drink. Brewers are scrambling to keep up with the country's newly packed bars.(The Atlantic)

• Thinking like a [Dog Show] Winner. (Quartz) 

• To wit: young people are embracing “polywork” (Digiday)

• Via Future of Transportation: America is home to 8 parking spots for every 1 vehicle, but cities are rethinking that space (FastCo)

• To that end, architects and builders are thinking about how their creations affect the planet. One of them, Kunle Adeyemi, has built his career around that question. (NYTimes) 

• Nike & Marcus Rashford say ‘the new land of football’ is inclusive & diverse (The Drum)

• Corollary, via Jing: What 20 Biggest Apparel Companies Have Done Since the Black Squares (WWD) 

• Opposite of that: Maybe we might be boycotting The North Face now? (Instagram)

• A decade after the Arab Spring, how social media use is evolving in the Middle East. (Wunderman Thompson)

• While the Rollerblade diaspora soldiers on:  A Pakistani counterterrorism unit wears in-line skates. Locals are skeptical of the attempt to make police seem friendlier (NYT)

Money Moves

• Luxury is getting into food (Vogue Business)

• While The beauty industry wants to infiltrate and redesign your home (Glossy) 

• Live commerce accelerates (Wunderman Thompson) 

• “Loom>Zoom>Room.” Jason Calacanis declares the current state of fundraising. 

• Corollary: Way more people have watched Quibi content on Roku than they every did on Quibi. (Variety) 

New Yawk City: 

• Friends from New York back with another banger interview, this time with legendary A&R man Dante Ross (Instagram) 

• Not sure what this trippy Bronze 56k x Reebok spot is about, but I know there’s an answer… (Instagram) 

Market-tings:

• I have an opinion on this. Did LVMH make or break Tiffany by turning it yellow? (Jing Daily) 

• Kinfolk gave itself a total redesign when it turned 10 years old (It’s Nice That) 

• The Globe and Mail has built a paywall that knows when to give up (Nieman Lab) 

• On the subject of paying: Google wants to do for shopping what it did for search (Vogue Business) 

• Hence, via Jing Daily: CMO as C-Suite MVP  (Forbes)

• Speaking of search: Via Robinhood Snacks: the most misspelled word during the pandemic has been "quarantine." The most common misspelling: "corn teen." (UPI)

• Via Future Party: Tide made laundry detergent meant for space travel. (Engadget)

• And The LEGO Brick is Getting a Sustainable Makeover (Hypebeast) 

A’ La Mode: 

• Hot of the success of the Banana Republic resale pop-up, [SIC] homie Ana Andjelic is back with a spare-time banger, “Creativity is dead, long live curation.” Key Quote: “Going forward, it will be very hard to imagine a retail establishment that does not give off an impression of a gallery.” (The Sociology of Business)

• While another [SIC] buddy, Michael Williams, names the top 125 stores in America (Acontinuouslean) 

• To that end, BoF’s What's a Store For? Professional Summit is free to register for and will be interesting. (Eventbrite) 

• Elsewhere in futures: What Are We Going to Wear? Key Quote: Predicting the future is a huge part of retail. Trend forecasters are back at it, eyes more on TikTok than the runway, adapting to a reality no one could have predicted. (NYT) 

• Related: The best photo example of the sartorial generational divide that next week’s [SIC] Talks guest Casey Lewis has ever seen.

• Discord is increasingly influential in street fashion (among men especially) (BoF) 

• Via Maekan: Ralph Lauren looking to become a major player in on-demand clothing in the future. (FastCo)

• Corollary: Nicole McLaughlin’s genius art / sneaker constructions are on eBay til July 1 (Instagram) 

• And from Rob Hubbert: Allyson Felix is starting her own shoe company (Time) 

• Tech's war for your wrist (Axios)

• While via Lean Luxe: Dimepiece’s Brynn Wallner wants watches to be fun (Hodinkee) 

• While 66% of Gen Z want to ditch fast fashion for good (i-D) 

• Not in Paris ;). Via BoF; Highsnob pops up in the Zurich Airport

• Hype-buy alert: The water shorts are better than ever, one of the tees was made by a 9-year-old, and a handful of classics are back for the first time in a long time. 💗Support Your Local Skate Site 💗(Quartersnacks)

• Via After School: cryptidcore is making creepy cool

• Also next wave: Kyle Chayka is posits Pokemontrainercore (The Dirt) 

• Which makes sense if, as he writes elsewhere, we’ve all got main character energy now (The New Yorker) 

In Fluence

• Via Marcus Bosch: 🧑‍🎨 “Creator” and “influencer”. Who is who?  Influencers are seen as trading in the calculated depiction of an “authentic lifestyle,” while “creators” are held to a different standard of realness in representations (Real Life)

• Irrespective of that answer: reality shifting is taking over Tiktok. (i-D)  

• Too many influencers. Not enough eyeballs. Will boredom kill Instagram? (FT)

Art in the Digital Age

• The ‘Baby Birkin’ NFT and the legal scrutiny on digital fashion (Vogue Business) 

• Curating NFTs? It’s More Art Than Science (Jing Culture)

• Related, via Marginal Revolution: A set of land in virtual world Decentraland has sold for a record-breaking $913,808 worth of MANA, the game’s Ethereum-based cryptocurrency (BlockCrypto) 

• While small museums are stealing the show on TikTok (Hyperallergic)

• Separately to all that: what Happened to Electronic civil disobedience?! (Hyperallergic)

Pictures: 

• The Extraordinary Story of Corita Kent, the “Pop Art Nun” (Hyperallergic)

• Since we’re talking Pop Art: Running around with Andy Warhol (Neuehouse) 

• Related; The golden age of Discos, photographed (Hyperallergic)

• Jamie Hawkesworth takes us on a photographic journey around The British Isles (It’s Nice That) 

Medialand

• Tucker Carlson =  Deep Throat. (NYT) 

• Related: What newsrooms still don’t understand about the internet You can’t report on a culture war and also be an invisible bystander. (Nieman) 

• Hence, via Splice: The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma has a program that trains therapists on how to treat journalists. 

• Meanwhile, Insider EiC Nicholas Carlson issued a memo last week mandating that all future articles should be under 600 words long.  Which maybe isn’t a good idea? Or maybe is. (Simon Owens) 

• While Quartz, NYT vets are launching a media company about work called Charter. (Axios)  

You Should Be Dancing: 

• Via Public Announcement: Kick out the drams: the musicians who went sober during the pandemic (The Independent)

• Via Music Redef: The ska revival is here, but ska never really went away (WaPo) 

• Meanwhile The FACE says Pop-punk’s not dead! Investigating 2021’s biggest genre revival.

• Corollary via Music Redef: What Pop Culture Owes to Rebecca Black (The Atlantic)

• Via music Redef: Noob’s guide to Aphex Twin (Passion Weiss) 

• Space Available and rave bae Peggy Gou create recycled plastic chair to "instigate awareness and change" (Dezeen) 

• Elsewhere in rave baes: Michelle Lhooq reminds us that Fun is still transgressive (and promises a summer of NYC underground party tips for subscribers to the excellent Rave New World newsletter) 

• Corollary via music Redef: the forgotten women of Factory Records (The Guardian) 

• Trapital breaks down the current state of the ‘Big 3’ record companies, outlining their contrasting strategies. 

• From Josh Gardiner: “Joel Connolly is writing some useful pieces for artists - and allies - to reimagine how people build, fund and manage music careers.  He's a background in music, now works in venture capital so brings interesting insight across the two worlds. "What if there was a way to invest in music as you would invest in a startup?”” (Substack) 

Foodness 

•  From Andrea Hernandez: “Krispy Kreme IPOd back in 2000 under ticker $KREME but was private again via acquisition —now they will file under ticker $DNUT” (Twitter)

• While Miller High Life domiciles “The Champagne of Beers”  to Milwaukee. (Fox6) 

• And via Front Office Sports: Chipotle launched the free video game “Race to Rewards” in which players can score rewards that they can redeem in-store. 

• What’s in your footlong? The Big Tuna Sandwich Mystery at Subway(The New York Times)

• Hence, via After School: Impossible Foods infiltrated public school cafeterias and launched a site for teens called...“The Birds and The Trees” promoting plant-based lifestyles. (Fooddive) 

• Other the other end of the spectrum: Blue Zone living is long living. Residents of Sardinia, California, Costa Rica, Greece and Japan have the highest life spans globally. Locals in these locations live to be at least 90, if not 100, and have significantly reduced rates of heart disease and dementia.(Wunderman Thompson)

Help the Aged: 

• Millenials are actually rich, maybe. Bloomberg columnist Allison Schrager argues that millennials are actually better off economically than their Boomer predecessors, because a significantly higher percentage of millennials have retirement plans than Xs or Boomers. 

• While in contrast, via 2PM,  a recent survey by the American Psychological Association found 33% of Gen Xers said their mental health had worsened throughout the pandemic and 58% had experienced unwanted weight changes. Sandwiched between Boomers and Millennials — Gen X has often been disregarded culturally.  (Digiday) 

• Related: How Well Do You Remember the 1990s? Frieze comes through with an alternative version of the decade that defined British contemporary art – from Damien Hirst’s sharks to Tony Blair’s pseudo cool. 

• Elsewhere in oldsters: via Marginal Revolution: They found a new frog in Ecuador and they named it after Led Zeppelin (The Guardian) 

Doing It Yourself (with Others) 

• Via Tanya Selvaratnum: Cereus Art is an organization dedicated to the empowerment of independent and emerging artists. 

• Similarly, via the photographer Amina Gingold,  INTERNS is a platform for multi-media artists at any point in their careers who are looking to find a community of peers in NYC.

• And via Declarative Statements: A deep dive on the freelance economy from Contra (a community for freelancers)

•  I Like Networking is a new space for women and non-binary professionals to make connections (It’s Nice That) 

• Via Beats & Bytes: How to Contact Brands for Sponsorships and Collaborations (Flypaper) 

Travelane: 

• Yolo Intel dips into her bric-a-brac bag and pulls up some new places to stay in my home-away-from-home, Callicoon NY (Substack)

• While A new kind of bi-coastal living: NYC to Accra (Departures) 

• The Most Expensive Cities In the world to live as an expat (Hypebeast) 

Finally, The Questions We’ve All Been Asking: 

• Which crew are you? From the Euro-hedonists of Capri to the Purists of New England, here’s the lowdown on the yachting tribes of 2021 (How to Spend It) 

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